The Way Of The Samurai

Without Fear or Favor

There is an old joke about a man who went to India and spent all
day, every day swinging a live tiger by the tail around and
around in a circle above his head.

When a passer-by asked him what he was doing, he said "I'm
keeping away the lions."

This confused the passer-by, who pointed out that there are very
few lions left in India.

"You see," said the man, "it's working!"

I have come to the conclusion over the past few months that
99.9% of fear is mere superstition and completely unnecessary.
Although we believe fear is essential in order to motivate us
and to keep us safe, it is in fact a poor substitute for
inspiration, knowledge and intuition.

* The inspiration to live a life you love will carry you long
after the adrenaline burst from fearing a life you hate has
burned out.

*The knowledge of what would happen if you were hit by a car is
more than enough to get most of us to look both ways before we
cross the street, even if we no longer hear our parents' voices
ringing in our ears to 'stay back'.

*Our intuitive awareness of danger will let us know not to trust
the smiling stranger even when our love/hate relationship with
fear will try to confuse the issue.

"Fear is not an emotion like sadness or happiness, either of
which might last a long while. It is not a state, like anxiety.
True fear is a survival signal that sounds only in the
presence of danger."

In other words, unless there is a clear and present danger,
there is no purpose served by feeling fear. In fact, the
continual sense of worry and anxiety so many of us live with
tends to blind us to any authentic awareness of danger. Like
the boy who cried wolf, our continual fearful response to our
fantasies about the future interferes with our ability to
respond to any actual danger.

We can safely live without fear if we are willing to honor three
inner signals:

1. Our no-brainer 'yes' signal
2. Our no-brainer 'no' signal
3. Our 'let's get the heck out of here now and figure out why
later' signal

So here's the experiment:

For the next week, live as if fear is completely unnecessary.
Don't worry about it if you feel it - a lifetime of conditioning
tends not to disappear overnight. Just notice when you are
about to do something if it is coming from fear or 'not-fear',
and if it's from fear, don't do it. Any time you aren't sure
what to do, ask yourself what you would do if you were not
afraid and do that.

Be kind to yourself along the way - the path of not-fear is not
always easy, especially at first. But after you've been on it
for awhile, you may find it difficult to go back to living the
other kind of life.

If that's a scary thought for you, ponder these words of Aung
San Suu Kyi, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and the president
of Burma who has lived under house arrest for many years:

"Fear is a habit. I am not afraid."